


The Tekkit War

by Entomancy



Series: The End [2]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entomancy/pseuds/Entomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Escalation, of the escalation, of the escalation - and sometimes the world just has to burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Firestorm

When had it all stopped being a game?

Lalna rose, further into air that was already thick with cinders and dust. Corkscrew columns of ashy debris spiraled up from ground to sky, obscuring anything but the silhouettes of cracked buildings and plumes of raw fire. Larger pieces of falling rubbish peppered him like a rain, and the background hum of his suit's filtration system had become a strained serenade, but it held, as he turned slowly – searching, with narrowed eyes and on-alert sensors, for the other shape hidden somewhere beneath the burning chaos.

_Where are you, you bastard?_

“No one left to hide behind,” he muttered, holding out his hands out to either side, as if steadying his position on an invisible rope – with tiny shifts of machinery around hand one, and the flicker of agitated magic about the other. “Don't tell me you're scared _now?_ ”

He wasn't sure what sense it was that felt the shift, but he dodged anyway, ducking back as a bright-tailed shape suddenly screamed out of the clouds above him, passing so close that the rocket-end heat scorched a narrow trail along his shoulder – and the missile went wide, vanishing back into the smog, and a moment later something detonated far below in a dulled-out bloom of angry red light.

How many of those things did he _have?_ No way was he just carrying them around – he must have been caching weapons around the valley for weeks.

 _Makes two of us_.

He was dimly aware that the idea of untold explosives hidden around the smoking remains of their once-town should have made him uneasy, not curious – but it didn't _really_ matter. The weight of his nanoblade hung easily at one hip, the tweaked mining laser at the other, and he shifted against the small, carefully-crafted shape that was strapped across his shoulders, almost inconspicuous in its simplicity.

There was laughter in his ears, spilling down his lips, as he shot forward again, cutting through the ash and clouds like a blunted silver dart. This had been coming for a long time.

_Where are you, Sjin?_

Stylised plate flashed above him, caught in a drift-opened moment of sunlight, and Lalna swiveled to bring his laser up, tracking the half-hidden shape before igniting the clouds in a storm of crimson bolts. He couldn't tell if he had actually hit, but the next moment a narrow wave of conjured fire swept out – poorly-aimed – roughly in his direction. It was easily avoided, but heat of it chased the smoke aside and he caught a brief glimpse of the thaumic-napalm pouring down over the charring shapes of the mushroom village below. Somewhere over his shoulder, something else blew up, followed by the sound of collapsing metal.

 _Poor guys; losing all their stuff._ The thought was distantly-faint in his own mind as he scanned the sky again, seeking any flicker of movement. It wasn't like there was anyone else left around to be too worried about the destruction – the valley had been steadily emptying since his desert weapons test weeks ago, and even the more stubborn residents had packed up quickly enough when the firing started. He _had_ thought that his preparations for the inevitable had been at least a little subtle – even if the speed of today's escalation had taken him rather by surprise – but he couldn't really complain.

Better an empty town than... anything else.

_Because I'm pretty sure we'd be doing this anyway._

His lips twitched into a slightly erratic smile under his faceplate, as his atention caught on the massive brazier that had once been that daft chicken sculpture. Uncontrolled escalation of technological tension was definitely a good excuse to get rid of things, he had to admit.

A bit of a spring-clean. With lasers.

Orientation was getting more difficult as the smog thickened, and Lalna dropped down further until the shape of the nearest building became more clear. The roof had fallen in, broken railtracks sticking out across the open space like shattered ribs, and he alighted briefly on one heat-bent girder, peering into the ravaged interior. The sight of a smouldering arm sent a brief jolt down his spine, but a few hasty blinks later and it resolved into a clearly-empty set of green overalls, half-crushed beneath a chunk of fallen masonry. There was -

\- a sound like a bow-string chorus, oddly harmonised, and Lalna ducked back against the intact wall, as a long arc of faintly-shimmering arrows stapled themselves into the brickwork above him.

“I can see you running, you son of a gun!” Sjin's voice echoed down from above, playfully-malicious as another set of archangel-rounds sought him out. Lalna hissed under his breath as a few of the half-corporeal arrows managed to find him, breaking against his armour with stings of translated impact, and his hand twitched as he slid along the wall to the frame of a broken window. The feathery scrape of forming bolts prickled against his skin as the magic unwound, and he sent his own seeking-volley skywards.

“Oh, for godsake,” he muttered and kicked upward again, following the course of the arrows, likely as ineffective against his opponent as they had been against himself. Sjin had quantum armour too, this time – which was a bit annoying.

They were pretty equally matched, in terms of active 'tech – and that idea _rankled_ , clawing up against his own sensibilities like something gone feral. Lalna's lips thinned as he slowed again, peering through the smoke. The rivalry had been... fine, overall, and the competitive friendship that had preceded it all equally so, but this was trying to be different now. Everything else – thefts, ambush, general cheeky-sod games – they all ended the same way; in fire, falling and failures, and so would this.

 _They_ had never been equal. That hadn't changed, before, and it wasn't going to now.

The air was clearer here, towards the further edge of town. He swung round in the cover of the low hillsides that flanked the valley, searching for any sign of the other hovering shape – but the figure that suddenly rose into view wasn't the one he was looking for. He wasn't entirely sure if he had been expecting this or not, but he knew who it was – who it could only be – even before actual recognition could kick in.

Rythian.

 _Why are you still here?_ It was a loaded thought, even in his head. The etharic buzz of his rings were suddenly uncomfortable against his fingers – intrusive, accusatory – and his jaw tightened.

How long had it been, anyway? Over a year since the... accident. Months since Rythian had shown up again – with no fanfare, no announcement, just a sudden gold-light glimmer of the again-active condensers, above what had for all intents been a tomb. Lalna had gone there, of course, indignant at the barely-cool timing of the intrusion – and found him, back.

It was impossible.

It was... interesting.

And then the brief moment of incredulous delight had broken away, as that drawn-out effigy of the man he had known _screamed_ at him, his cracked voice harsh with disuse, spitting long-rehearsed words like bullets. But the worst thing – not the words, not the accusations, not the white-hot trails of humiliated rage that whipped across his own mind, not at _all_ – were the eyes in that changed face; wild eyes that Lalna could barely meet, tinged with something so deeply _else_ that it made his skin crawl. His own failure, wearing his once-friend's visage like a broken mask.

He wouldn't even tell him what had happened.

 _And doesn't that_ bother _you, Lalna? Doesn't that just burn you up, inside?_

Rythian wasn't even looking at him, turning slowly to stare up over the smoldering roof of the nearby tower. Even from there, Lalna could see the strange way the air was moving around the mage's hands, pulling the smoke into half-seen patterns, and his own fingers tightened as he sighted down the laser.

 _It's a good excuse to get rid of things_. His earlier, half-jovial thought echoed back at him, twisting up around his mind in a way that was horrifying and seductive, all at once. But when everything had escalated _this_ far already...

“Trying to protect your house, 'Rythian'?” he muttered, slightly surprised by the uneven edge in his voice. “Like that's gonna happen.”

 _You put yourself in the middle of this. Not me_. _Not this time._

He pulled the trigger.

_\---_

_I hear fire_.

The realization was slow to work its way into the front of Rythian's mind. Every spare scrap of his attention was so tightly focused on the task at hand, it was only when the acrid scent of smoke began to twitch at his nostrils that he finally paid it any heed. The long, low interior of his house usually bore a lingering, sulphurous odor as an inevitable alchemical consequence – and a previous proclivity towards lava-based decor – but it generally didn't smell or sound like it was actually _alight_.

He tried to ignore it. There weren't many days that went by in which some scientific contrivance didn't blow up, ignite, melt, implode, or generally malfunction _somewhere_ in the neighborhood. It wasn't his concern. Not… now, particularly. He renewed his attention, carefully twisting at the fine metal band between his fingers. It was still cushioned on a thin layer of etharically-charged air, and he sent a fresh trail of focus down into the gem at its centre, tracing another pathway in the embroidery of spellwork settled throughout the stone. This has to be just right; it needed to be –

The floor shuddered under his boots, and he bit down on a yelp as the spell-thread cut back, leaving a sharp line of rejected magical pain across his mind.

_What the hell is going on out there?_

He carefully set the half-completed ring down in its little obsidian crucible and stood back, feeling the invisible surface of the surrounding wards drain past his fingers. A long-held breath finally escaped as he let himself exhale again, and suddenly the acrid tang in the air was very clear, accompanied by a not-so-distant crackle of angry flames. It sounded like something had gone very wrong this time, and he sighed, rubbing at the faint tingles of pain in his temples that a sudden withdrawal from that close a thaumic focus would bring.

Sometimes, he half-wondered if scientific endeavors were _set up_ to go wrong; a kind of in-built obsolescence to inspire devotees to greater heights of mad experimentation. It would explain a lot.

Why he did he put up with it? The oft-repeated thought took advantage of his distraction to niggle at him again as he ducked out of the main alchemical room, heading out into the twisting hallway that skirted the interior.

He could go anywhere, probably more easily than most – so why did he stay here? Surrounded by the cooling remnants of a life that was always a little unfamiliar, in a hundred ways that managed to stand out all the stronger in their insignificance. Aside from a proliferation of dust, spider's webs, and the colonising efforts of some sort of weird blue moss on the condenser apparatus, everything was exactly the same as when he had… left.

 _Everything but me_.

The burning smell was very clear when he reached the door, and he paused for a moment, tugging his mask a little more securely into place across his nose for whatever filter it would provide. Someone had really screwed up this time. He flickered his fingers, felt the flight-ring shiver against his skin, and stepped into the air as he slid out of the narrow door, turning in the air to see – to see – what –

_…holy god…_

Shock hit with hammer-force as the scene unfurled. His squat house was at the edge of the town – or, rather, where the town had _been_ – but now it stood a little apart from a scene of utter devastation. Choking-thick pillars of smoke held up the sky, and his widening gaze tracked the ravenous dance of a dozen different infernos as they swung out towards any unburning structures, dragging firey fingers at bricks and failing pipework. Thermal winds swirled ash and sparks from side to side in scalding currents of scorched air, and he caught brief glimpses of recognizable shapes within the firestorm, visibly crumbling under the sudden furnace of it all.

He was barely aware of himself rising, trying not to breathe, as he stared with sudden desperation across the ravaged landscape. The forest was pretty much burned down – carbonized skeletons of recent trees now little more than angular sketches against the burning backdrop – and he caught a glimpse of the toppling shape of a huge mushroom, wilting and crumbling back into itself even as it fell. That sight spilled more specific horrors through his thoughts, and his stomach lurched.

 _…did anyone get out? And how in the blinding hells did I_ miss _this?_ Sure, he had been rather wrapped up in his work – for various reasons – but even so...

He had a vague recent memory of someone hammering on his door, and an alto voice, raised in concern. Zoey, perhaps – the slightly-erratic redhead with the fungus obsession, and one of the few residents who didn’t look quite so wary around him – but he had ignored it. Too busy. Too focused on… everything else.

How long ago? Had that been - ?

Distracted, gawking at the burning town, he couldn't even try to dodge as the first shower of brilliant crimson bolts seared out of the clouds. Agony exploded along his right arm, the shock spinning him in the air so most of the following shots went wide, skimming a few strips of lasered-pain down the rest of him. The next volley missed him by inches, taking chunks from the roof below, and he quickly sought what cover he could behind the gleaming shape of the powerflower. Faint trails of indrawn ambient magic rippled across his skin as he pressed himself to the golden surface, trying to catch breath through pain-clenched teeth.

Damn. Damn – damn – _damn!_ All he had on him was flight – everything else even vaguely combative was still inside. The scent of burnt skin was acrid in his nostrils, his heart beating a frantic rhythm against his ribs, as he tried to still the maddening whirl of thoughts.

They were using lasers. That didn't narrow it down much. His fingers tightened against the bright surface behind him, and a prickle of suspicion lit under his mind. The soft feel of collecting magic was… stronger, than usual, and he took a precious second to let his eyes slide closed, trying to get a grip on the particular sense of the etharics there.

It was fire. Fallout from fire magic – badly focused, true, but distinct enough. And they were using lasers. Science and magic, weirdly melded, and raining devastation in its wake.

_Oh no…_

This time he did manage to dodge, dropping down behind the dark walls as the deadly scarlet blasts fanned out, blowing pieces of brick the size of footballs out of the roof. He winced as the powerflower took the brunt of it, shattering into a rain of razor-edged amber, and the fizzing tin taste of escaping, half-realised magic hallucinated its way down his throat. He hesitated, pressed up against the wall and torn between fight and flight, with adrenaline and worse burning in his blood.

Everything else was inside, but at this rate there wasn't going to be much left to salvage. Sliding sideways, he risked peering around the side as, just for a moment, a gust of the spark-scattered wind dragged the air clear – and _another_ round of laser-fire poured out of the sky, this time from behind the first, and the armoured shape swung round to meet it. Rythian threw himself aside just before the wall beside his face blew out from near-miss, peppering him with a thousand points of tiny shrapnel, and he swallowed a yell.

He shot back, away from the once-refuge of the crumbling wall. Closest cover was the wide trunk of one of the remaining enhanced trees that were scattered around the town's rough perimeter, and he darted towards it, expecting any moment to feel the searing bite of the laser again; nothing came, and canopy shade closed overhead.

 _Wasn't it enough for you, Lalna?_ Bile curled its acrid grasp across the back of his throat and he swallowed hard, as he flattened himself back against the welcoming bulk of the huge tree. His fingers tightened, clutching at his arm just above the screaming burn, and he gritted his teeth as he squinted into the smogged-out sky.

 _You want to be_ sure _, this time?_

It wasn't just Lalna, though. That realization was as cold as the others, as he tracked the distant, grappling shapes. Both were mostly clad in the same grey plates, but the new arrival had lost his helmet. Rythian couldn't see much clearly from his position, but he did catch the flash of wicked grin, as Sjin raised his own laser and slammed the butt of the weapon into Lalna's throat, knocking him back.

He wanted to be surprised. There _was_ a faint edge of shock lingering at the side of his mind, but it was nothing to the seething rage that was clawing a blackened path up through his thoughts. His shrouded lips curled back, a strangled snarl boiling up his throat, and Rythian felt his own fingernails digging bloodily hard into his palms as he fought to stay on top of the fury. On top of _everything_ , even as the echoes began to spill back.

 _You bastards – you_ bastards _– you fucking dare -_

The hovering melee above broke apart and Sjin tossed the empty laser aside, swinging his arm out towards Lalna. Magic bloomed around his fingers and Rythian’s teeth ground together at the sight. There was a ringing in his ears and he tried to remember how to breathe.

_Balance; control it. I can't afford to -_

The first volley missed Lalna by inches, the half-real glimmer of archangel rounds sinking into the clouds in a translucent swirl. Sjin dropped down as the scientist fired back, his attack swallowed up by the flames creeping up the nearby mage-tower, and Sjin’s turning gaze locked, just for an instant, with Rythian's own.

He saw the smile rise.

_Oh god -_

\---


	2. Endergame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where everything starts to go really wrong.

He wasn't sure they could kill each other like this. Lalna reeled back, clutching at his throat, but the gesture was more through habit than need, as his suit absorbed most of the impact. Sjin lunged again, swinging the emptied laser around like a club, but he caught it, dragging back as he brought his own still-armoured head down on Sjin's bare face. Foreheads met, accompanied by a yelp of pain, and the discarded gun dropped out of sight beneath them as Sjin dodged back. Blood was starting to ooze down his hairline, but the slightly-crazed grin on his lips was focused enough.

"Out of charge? Time to switch it up.” He grinned and brought his splayed fingers up. Lalna ducked away instinctively as air blurred in front of him – feeling the close-by shift of forming arrows as he moved. His own answering round barely grazed over Sjin's head as the other man dropped like a stone, and Lalna saw his opponent's gaze shift as he moved. Sjin's arm swung out again, pointed downward this time, and unleashed another volley of shimmering arrows towards the base of the nearest big tree.

Wrong-footed, Lalna hesitated. There didn’t seem any _point_ to… then he saw the impacts, heard the cry even from there, and his stomach lurched weirdly as the dark shape crumpled back against the grass. Sjin tilted his head back up to meet Lalna's surprised stare, his smile bright and strange on his uncovered face, and laughed quietly.

"…collateral damage?" The expression in those eyes was too _knowing_ , and Lalna felt a chill run down his spine, even as his opponent vanished abruptly behind another poorly-aimed wash of flame. He avoided it easily enough, backing up as he did so until the burning remnants of the squat brick house – and everything else – was swallowed up by its own smoke.

 _Don't pretend you didn't want this_. His own thoughts were mocking, echoing inside his skull and he rose again, trying to get some height on the blurring mess of smog. Everything was on fire. Things that had absolutely no right to hold a flame were on fire, and Lalna failed to stifle another disjointed laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. _Magic, everyone._

His fingers curled against his rings, as he looked down at the ruined town. It had all stopped being a game a long time ago. But when had he actually _noticed_ that?

 _I want to go home_. The thought was childish, but heavy in his mind, dragging at the whirling, adrenaline-spun chaos that filled him to every side. _And where would that be, Lalna?_ This wasn't the first time, after all; and it wasn't likely to be the last.

_Finish it. Fix it._

"Okay," he muttered, still scanning the smoky air for any sign of the other hovering shape. "Enough. This is it."

 _I'm gonna nuke him_.

Sjin's house was missing most of the roof by now, its railcart system tilting sadly over broken walkways, and seemed to be empty. Lalna swallowed hard against his suddenly-tight throat as he unhooked the smooth shape from behind him. He had been pleased with this one. A lot of careful work had gone into crafting the miniturised components inside, to get down to something small, portable, and sufficiently destructive. He couldn't remember what he had intended it to be for, originally.

It was another layer of escalation – but what else was he meant to _do?_ Sjin was damn near impossible to actually threaten at the best of times, and Lalna's resolve hardened as he dropped down, landing without ceremony beside the towering tanks of refined fuel. Oh, he could be _hurt_ sure enough – a memory flickered, briefly, of that figure crumpled back against glassy sand, his trickster's eyes glazed with pain and surprise as Lalna had bluntly sent a final conjured bolt into his shoulder – and he could certainly be _scared_ , in the then-and-there, but...

You couldn't really _rattle_ the bastard. Not properly. Lalna considered himself fairly well removed from too much needless sentimentality – because, honestly, you'd never get _anything_ done otherwise – but Sjin was... something else. As far as he had been able to work out, the man just didn't care about anything enough to seriously unnerve.

It was… annoying.

He wedged the deceptively-small device into place beneath the fuel stacks and opened the controls, running quickly through the setting sequence with fingers that trembled only slightly. Because of the adrenaline. Yes. The activation button was tiny – so tiny – under his thumb, and he let out a long, shaking breath as he pressed it. A little red light flashed into life, winking gently against the smooth casing.

There. He sat back, staring at the bomb with a half-focused gaze, trying to ignore the strange sensation that the inside of him had suddenly drained away entirely, leaving nothing but a faint, chilled numbness. That was it. He could leave, and this little piece of incarnate destruction would blow, taking anything left in this damn town with it into nuclear oblivion. His fingers traced, lightly, across the casing, leaving thin traces of ash on the surface.

Where would he go? There were possibilities; there always were. A slight frown eased onto his face – although, it might help if he actually had something on him that wasn't armour or a nanosaber.

 _Maybe I'm being a bit hasty_. He looked down at the bomb under his outstretched hand, noting that the red light had increased the urgency of its blinking, and bit his lip. He had some time. Enough to grab a few things – assuming his house was still there.

It was, and was remarkably intact. The roof was on fire, but he didn't need anything that would be upstairs. Force of habitat had kept a few essentials within easy exit speed, and he darted in through the open door, heading for the nearest inset chest.

Several realisations hit at once, starting with that he hadn’t left the door ajar – and that the roof was on fire from _inside_. His widening gaze tracked down the room, as time seemed to congeal and ice flooded his thoughts, and he focused on the wedged-open trap door, the electronic lock sparking madly to one side.

_Oh god – he's in my reactor!_

A hand swung up over the edge of the trap. Sjin hauled himself up, braced awkwardly against the ladder – and let out a yelp as Lalna's grip closed on the collar-edge of his armour, wrenching him upwards as he lunged, viciously, driven by a sudden surge of desperate rage. Point-blank, he drove the nanoblade into the weakest spot between the familiar armour plates, half-coherent words spilling from his lips, and he felt the familiar suit fail under that hidden weakness. Sjin gave a short, dreadful sound; his widened eyes stared up at Lalna in shock as he crumpled around the impaling thrust. Glassy blue shapes scattered onto the wooden floor, falling from weakened fingers as he pitched forward, and Lalna's heart skipped a beat. That was a _lot_ of cooling cells.

 _I need to get down there_. He shoved Sjin aside and scrambled down the ladder, impeded somewhat by his own armour's bulk. The reactor room opened out below him, wide and glass-lined, and full of the rising symphony of frantic alarms. He launched over to the wrenched-open casing, staring at the mess inside. No coolant; wires and mechanisms melted into immovable lumps of useless plastic; and he could feel the heat in the metal, even through his gauntlets.

 _No no no-nono-no no – there's too much damage – there's no_ time _…_

He skidded backwards, and his shoulders hit the ladder as another alarm started up.

 _I did just set a nuke_. _But I know how to_ stop _that._ His hand strayed, just for a moment, to press over the little remote control nestled against his chest. Always have a fallback. Always have insurance. Never build a trap you can't get out of.

_But I can't stop this._

Acid swirled in the back of his throat as he lurched back up the ladder, dragging himself out into the burning main room with urgent horror boiling through his mind – and his gaze fell on Sjin. The man had managed to crawl forward a little, leaving a smeared trail of scarlet behind him. His eyes were stretched wide, glazed with shock, but they met Lalna's and the moment jolted, painfully, with the shared understanding.

It had always been a game. And they had both lost.

"No." It took a few precious seconds for Lalna to realize the voice had been his own, and a few more to realize that there were _ideas_ behind the word. He hesitated, caught between futures, and felt laughter twisting in his dry throat.

Time to change the rules.

He dived across the room, hauling chests open with shaking and stuffing handfuls of items into a bag. How long did he have? The alarms were audible up here now, along with various other ominous warning sounds, and he swivelled back into the room, attaching the laden sack to his belt in the nanablade's empty clip.  Sjin had stopped moving now; he suddenly looked so much smaller, curled in on himself, and he let out a sudden, ragged breath as Lalna dropped down next to him – and pulled his arm over his shoulders. Bloody fingers tightened against him as he straightened up, taking their combined weight, and Sjin struggled past his own strained breathing.

“… _why?_ ”

Lalna adjusted position slightly, avoiding his gaze. There was a lot of... complicated there, that he didn't want to see.

“I can't fix all this. What we've done, to everything.” The words were thick on his lips, and he scowled down his own face. Sjin made a weak attempt to wriggle free and he redoubled his grip, feeling him flinch as the wound pulled. “But I can fix _this_.”

“That's – not exactly reassuring,” Sjin managed, voice tight with pain, and Lalna glared at him.

“You _want_ to die?”

“...no.”

“Then shut up.”

The nearest window had already blown out.  Lalna hauled them through the empty frame, his flight ring buzzing angrily against his hand at the sudden shift in weight, but finally they were rising. Rapidly. Calculation danced through his mind, sketching warnings of safe distances and wind speed, and he gritted his teeth.

They were going to have to fly _very_ fast.

\---

Why had he stayed?

The question – _that_ question – the one that stalked at a distraction's width just behind his thoughts – poured down through the agony-clouded fragments of Rythian's mind. Demanding an answer, demanding a _reason_ for why he was lying there, pinned to the ground like a specimen under glass. He could have left, so easily, so many times since.

 _Why here, Rythian? So close to_ him _, where every face once knew you for a dead man – and half of them still suspect it anyway?_ _Why stay?_

His fingers curled, spasmodically, and he could feel the archangel arrows slide against his flesh – half-real in substance, entirely too solid in _edge_. There was a faint shiver against his sternum; the determined thrum of his lifestone, far out of its depth.

Why had he stayed?

Perhaps because it was easier than leaving; his house, all of his equipment was here. Familiar things, however broken they might seem, had some comfort.  And even looking others' suspicions in the face was better than being alone again.

But in truth he had stayed because he could still _feel_ it, those pieces of living stain that writhed beneath his heart, curling whispering tendrils around his darkest thoughts. Stayed because if there was one thing he needed more than anything else, it was something to hold him back – something to remind him, however awkwardly, how to still _be_ human.

Although at this exact moment, the searing pain that seemed to have replaced his skin was doing a reasonable job of that.

He had to wait out the spell. A tiny part of his remaining mind was clinging to memory – to his own voice, explaining the impermanence of the conjured fletching as he poured a demonstration arc of translucent arrows from his fingertips. And the copied action, followed with a slightly-manic grin of discovery on that goggle-topped face.

_Before. Before you as good as fed me to that place. My friend._

With a soft, crystalline sound, the arrows finally dissipated, and Rythian's violated muscles twitched at the sudden expulsion. He grunted, falling flat against the scalded earth, and managed to turn his head enough to scream into the scalded grass, muffling himself as he let out the howl that had been pressing up against his ribs. There was a lot in the sound, a lot he didn't want to think about even if he had had the presence of mind to do so, and when it ended he fell limp again, listening to his own ragged breathing.

Couldn't stay. Needed to move. Nothing was working well, but he managed to bend his fingers – frustratingly slowly – and set the ring. The lifestone hummed a faint warning as a curl of power drew away, and he could feel some of its effort weakening, but he had no choice. Gravity's grip lessened until he was able to get into an awkward crouch, cushioned either side by the ring's etheric support, and began to shuffle forwards.

It seemed to take an age before he reached the first edge of the broken-open brickwork shell of his house. There wasn't a lot left – the roof and most of the upper walls had been torn away, and several sections were still on fire – and it took far too long to maneuver his perforated form over the moat, until he could slump back against an inner wall, panting harshly. There was a rough, wet pain somewhere in his chest, over and above the agonized miasma that was ensnared about him, and a sharp cough hunched him over as he pressed one shaking hand to his mouth.

It came back black. Ice trickled down his neck as he looked down at the oily mess on his fingers; he tasted nothing, but his mouth was full of _texture_ , a stinging, congealed feeling that sent new flutters of panic over his thoughts.

He had to control it; that sense of void-born malevolence, whispering to the song of his own fury as it slid past the tattered remains of his barriers. So many of the defences he had set into place in these last months were gone – cracked, crumbled, torn open by the claws of renewed betrayal. He pressed his hand onto the lifestone's hidden shape, and tried not to be sick.

 _Sjin basically killed me_. _Oh god._

Progress was just as slow inside. Rythian hauled himself along the split-open corridor and tried not to hear the sound of collapsing masonry outside, tried not to feel the scalded heat of the boosted winds; his world narrowed down to the drag and scrape of his own battered limbs. Navigating the doorway would have posed a challenge, if it had still been there – but instead the walls had been blasted into fist-sized chunks of rubble along the entire half of that corridor, and he was able to crawl pathetically-slowly through the opened space.

He almost wished he hadn't bothered. What remained of the alchemical room was littered with shattered equipment, and his heart sank even further as he surveyed the destruction. Faint trails of thaumic plasma moved strangely across the floor, leaking from the jagged crack that snaked down the side of the toppled condenser. Spilled potions blended together in a glistening slick of vaporous mess, bubbling and discolouring where the different fluids mixed, and in one place ran freely through a smooth hole the combination had eaten into the tiles.

Was there anything left? With the ring's aid, he managed to get upright – even if it was half-hanging in the air like a cheap puppet – and drifted over to the work bench, which had been split in half by a toppled chunk of roof. His shaking fingers finally managed to find the little obsidian crucible, so heavily enspelled against interference that there was actually brick dust settled on the ward-layer, and he held it up, peering at the dark shape inside.

It wasn't finished. Unfocused magic crackled against his scorched fingers, as raw twists of power from the destroyed condensers found somewhere to earth, and he put it down again. He sank back down, leaning heavily on a pile of rubble, and his gaze drifted across the floor until it alighted on a seemingly-identical flagstone, and a humourless smile pulled at the edge of his lips.

Of course, _that_ would be fine. Damn thing. He leaned down, sweeping away broken glass, and unceremoniously pressed one bloody palm to the surface. There was a faint _click_ , somewhere underneath, and the tile rose up slightly, revealing a chiselled pattern of grip either side.

What had he originally kept in here? He could barely remember. It took more effort than he would have liked to shift the stone – setting off little points of painful light across his vision – and he reached inside gingerly, until his grasping fingertips closed on soft material and he sat back, pulling the wrapped, wretched thing into his lap.

Even through the dark cloth of his old cloak, the proximity of it prickled at his less-conventional senses. The Screaming Blade. He hated that name, but nothing else had yet seemed appropriate. There was –

\- a new note to the symphony of chaos outside. There were alarms anyway, rising and dying in the devastation, but these sounds were new and unpleasantly familiar. Rythian frowned, peering up through the ruined roof in time to see a flash of sunlight beyond the clouds – he shrank back automatically, and something at the back of his thoughts contorted in disgust – _coward_ – and then the double shape passed overhead, leaving nothing but a rapid tunnel in the smoke, and his stomach gave a horrible lurch.

They had gone. And now he recognized the very specific kind of warning in the air; that particular sound once described to him as the "ballsed it up _massively_ " alarm. The reactor – one of Lalna's prized bits of technological wrangling – was going wrong.

He couldn't out run that – hell, he couldn't _walk_ , and the only other option was half-done. He glanced back up at the table, already cursing himself for some imagined past inattention, for not somehow squeezing more _time_ out of everything else. Anger sparked again under his mind, and he felt the sword shiver even through its shroud, warningly.

_I can't do it, not like this. It – I'm – not enough..._

His attention shifted, dragged back to where oily remnants still tainted his fingers – and chance gleamed, cool and dreadful against the mortal panic entwining itself around his mind. The ring wasn't complete... but it was _based_ on all this, wasn't it? It was to be another barrier, another carefully-crafted cage for what lurked just under his blood. But there was power there, however little he wanted to acknowledge it.

_Or do I just let you get away with everything? Lalna, Sjin?  I want – I need to –_

But why not? Doing nothing would kill him with just as much certainty. His gaze tracked across the broken edges of the walls, across the last few glitters of shattered condenser, as damp heat prickled at the sides of his face.

What did he have left to lose? Everything.  Nothing. Just some bricks, and the dusty remnants of a life he could barely keep hold of. There would be a price, but there was always a price. He had lived with the fear of this accidental trait for too long already – he wasn't going to die with it too.

 _Fair enough_.

The alarms reached another pitch, as he turned, plucked the ring free, and jammed it onto one finger before his nerve could fade. _It_ was there, a heart's beat away from the balance of him, and he let his eyelids slide closed as he turned his focus inwards – and sank himself into the trailing void.

For the longest moment, it seemed as if nothing would happen. Then his muscles spasmed violently, slamming him back against the wall, but he didn't fall, held up by the sense that grasping, icy talons were suddenly digging into every part of him – and any hopes he might have had for coherent thought died, as his so-careful control broke away and the seething impotence of betrayal howled up like a black storm.

_How many times, Rythian? How many times before you learn to kill them first?_

He felt his fingertips burn, acid-hot against stone that suddenly had more give to it that it should. The room flowed away – banished, erased – subsumed to nothing beneath the shifting mess of shadows that surged down through the edges of his vision. His jaw distended in a grimace so wide that it split the flesh, birthing black-bloody cracks like new veins that snaked downwards beneath his skin – and the ring burst into unreal, inverted brilliance.

_You think you have nothing left to lose, little mage? You think this is as bad as it gets?_

He wanted to scream, but the writhing darkness numbed his throat, even as a part of him – the part that had always _wanted_ this, the flicker of old thoughts, broken ideals that had sought that slice of oblivion in the first place – wrapped his own self back around the whispering coils of it all, making them his own.

 _You chose this. Intruder. Thief. Whatever else, you chose_ this.

There was a different sound happening – but so far away, so far now _–_ the rising pitch of technological failure, as distant seals and pipes and coolant rods broke apart. Veins stood out like charcoal-tattoos against his skin as he arced back against himself, and fine particles of black-violet light began to bleed out around him. The ring whined and spat at his hand, unleashed power flowing towards its unfinished focus, and part-formed etharic pathways tore open, leaking raw magic into the shadow-step air.

_We will come for you, Enderborn. We will find you, and you will learn that even nothing can be lost._

The distant howl of frantic sirens peaked – and Rythian _shattered,_ as dark-bright motes washed out across the ravaged floor from a half-held shape in the air.

And the world vanished in the twin-point, obliterating brilliance of atomic fire.

\---


	3. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aftermath, and future plans.

It was cold.

As far as first impressions went, it could have been much worse. It took a while before the sensations could properly percolate into his mind, but finally the insistent chill – and a certain awkward rockiness under his left hip – managed to drag together enough attention to make themselves unavoidable, and Rythian groaned softly. Inching an eyelid open didn't much help, revealing only further muddy darkness, and he shifted position, feeling wet earth pressing against him in most directions.

So. He was either still alive, or the afterlife was a definite let down. 

He lay still and tried to make sense of things. There was an airspace above his head and mud was soaking up through his clothes.  After a few false starts he managed to get up onto his elbows, and peered around into the half-lit space.

_Where the hell am I?_

Nothing was familiar. He had pried himself out of a rough trench at the base of a shallow canyon, tree-lined on the surrounding slopes and scattered with the fallen branches and mats of dense moss. Moonlight poured down over the lip of the cliffs above, gleaming a smaller mirror from the surface of a pool at the opposite side of the space. He struggled upright and headed towards it, automatically curling his fingers against – nothing?

He stopped and raised a hand, gingerly, half-dreading what he would find – as the press of recent memories crowded every closer, clawing for attention on the sides of his mind – but there was little enough _to_ see. Little flecks of metal still clung to his skin, flaking off as he moved, but the rings were gone. They hadn't stood up to... whatever had brought him here.

At the thought, he fished around in his tattered shirt until he found the pair of small shapes hung around his neck, but nothing there had fared much better. The lifestone was cracked, right down the centre, and tiny shards of red stone winked in the moonlight as they dusted past his fingertips. The star was empty too, dulled from the inside like smoke on glass, and he let the useless things fall back, his lips thinning.

_So, it's dark, and I have nothing. This is an issue._

Sighing, he rubbed at his temples, smears of gritty mud sliding under his fingers. He turned back towards the pool and peered down – into his own eyes, burning in reflection with a cold purple light.

And the memories finally broke through, sweeping aside his carefully-oblivious thoughts like a storm surge, and the recent ghosts of perfect horror howled in his ears. He was dimly aware of sinking to his knees, clutching at the sides of his head as if it would break under the force of it all – what happened, what _they_ had done – what he had taken – what he had felt in those last fragmented heartbeats. So much fury and fear; his own and not; the song of betrayal reverberating through his blood and over it all was the _power_ , the void-called, ravenous strength of it, as he had reached out – down – back into the invaded depths of his soul, and welcomed in the darkness.

What had it taken back? What did he owe?

 _Enderborn_.

“I am Rythian,” he muttered, insistently, through numbed lips. “I am _Rythian_.”

That helped, a little, and he tried to focus on the familiar syllables, find something to pin himself to in the writhing maelstrom inside his head. Awareness shifted and he saw his own body, as if from outside – torn clothing, mud and dried blood smeared about him like macabre shadows, but strangely whole; the arrow-wounds, the burns – all gone, healed, leaving nothing more than the sketches of scarring against his skin.

What else had changed? Other than his eyes, now spilling a faint wash of dark violet down his cheeks, even half-lidded. What had he lost? What had he gained?

_How do I even know?_

It had been so obvious before, when he had drawn that first, desperate breath of real air again, and he had felt the stowaway intrusion uncurl beneath his heart. It had horrified him then, but _this..._ didn't.

Perhaps that was worse.

He was sinking now, back into himself, and his focus swung inwards, tracing along rewritten mental topography. Before, there had always been a line between _it_ and him, even with the threads of it tangled through him like blackened roots – but that line had gone. Fascinated, he watched the shadows roll just below his surface, but now the darkness moved with him, shifting like flowing sand around his own thoughts.

This wasn't what he had expected – but what had that been? A hint of scorn found his lips, his hands relaxing as he met his own altered gaze again, and he tried to remember what he had been so afraid of.  If he had lost anything in this melding embrace, he seemed better off without it.

_All of this... maybe it happened for a reason, or maybe not. But Sjin and Lalna got me caught up in their little war, and I will see them pay for that._

No more denial; no more hiding. No more trying to wrap himself in the tattered remains of a dead man's life. No more bleating about being alone. He _was_ new – returned, reforged, remade – he was tired of pretending otherwise.

For some things, the only possible response was retribution.

 _I am Rythian – and this is_ mine.

-x-

  

( ... ~~craft.  I should not be allowed.  
~~

It's a damn good thing Zoey near-landed on him, really! ~~  
~~Written entirely with the excellent[Blackrock Chronicle posters ](http://zoeyp.tumblr.com/post/44302879430/here-are-the-season-posters-for-the-blackrock)stuck in my head. If you can have that, with an image.)


End file.
